New gallery and exhibitions devoted to Gilbert & George opens to the public this week!
Passing through a cobbled courtyard and entering the historic building designed by SIRS Architects in collaboration with Gilbert & George, visitors are greeted by a reception area reminiscent of Gilbert & George's restored Georgian home and studio located on nearby Fournier Street. From there, three state-of-the-art exhibition spaces of differing scales and feel extend over three levels, accompanied by a film room located in the courtyard, introducing visitors to their work. The Centre will open to the public on 1 April 2023.
The inaugural exhibition at The Gilbert & George Centre will be THE PARADISICAL PICTURES, exhibited in London for the first time. Gilbert & George take their place in this disquieting vision of a heavenly place in a manner resembling psychical reports or transmissions from a journey deep into an enchanted forest or overgrown park. It is as though a psychedelic landscape, more given to poetic realism and Arthurian legend, had secretly envisioned science-fiction.
THE PARADISICAL PICTURES at the Gilbert & George Centre will coincide with the unveiling of their new THE CORPSING PICTURES at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London. These are Gilbert & George’s most profoundly personal and confrontational works to date. They present the viewer with ambiguity, contradiction and enigma, as much as pathos, poignancy, sepulchral eeriness and a visceral sense – conveyed by the attitude and expressions of Gilbert & George within the pictures – of sudden helplessness and somnolence in the face of entombment and entrapment.
Further Information: THE GILBERT + GEORGE CENTRE